


Discomposed

by AmberJeans



Series: Past The Present [8]
Category: Shadowrun, Shadowrun Returns (Video Game), Shadowrun: Hong Kong
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Past Abuse, past relationship, toxic ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberJeans/pseuds/AmberJeans
Summary: The commlink registers an unknown number and a complete lack of credentials. Most Johnsons she’d met don’t always advertise their identity to people who are hot in the news like her. Doesn’t mean it ain’t too damn early for this drek…but still, she answered the comm.“What the hell do you want?” Part of her knows that rudeness may not be wise, but the sleep-deprived side of her is too ravaged to care about formalities. Plus… she doubted Kindly Cheng would look too kindly at her taking any side-gigs right now.“Why, Kris! Is that any way to speak to an old friend? What would your dear old Raymond say?”An old flame returns to Kris; who, still hurting from the drek Antarctic run, isn't ready to be burned again.**Notes at the end**
Relationships: Gobbet (Shadowrun)/Original Female Character(s), OC/OC
Series: Past The Present [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1303652
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Discomposed

In the darkness of her little room on the Bolthole, Kris threw her arm over her face and sighed. The darkness helped her decompress from that absolute shitshow she'd just limped back from.

The silence grew even harder to deal with, as she struggled to digest all the many little ways the Antarctic run had gone south. She growled into her arm; what she wouldn't give to get sloshed right about now. Damn Duncan; if he could hold his liquor she wouldn't have needed to bar it.

A ringing rouses her from this funk. With a savage groan she snatches up her comm.

“Dammit! Just who the hell’s calling at this hour?” 

The commlink registers an unknown number and a complete lack of credentials. Most Johnsons she’d met don’t always advertise their identity to people who are hot in the news like her.  _ Doesn’t mean it ain’t too damn early for this drek… _ but still, she answered the comm.  __

“What the hell do you want?” Part of her knows that rudeness may not be wise, but the sleep-deprived side of her is too ravaged to care about formalities. Plus… she doubted Kindly Cheng would look too kindly at her taking any side-gigs right now.

“Why, Kris! Is that any way to speak to an old friend? What would your dear old Raymond say?”

Kris shot upright, suddenly very,  _ very  _ awake. A voice both soft and sweet that lured her to her doom like a siren lured ancient mariners to grinding death on jagged rocks. She pulled the commlink put to her face. Years had been kind to the woman on the screen; her formerly crop-top auburn hair now fell to her shoulders, framing a face so well sculpted and inviting that many would have believed her to be an elf. Based on the way she hid her human ears behind her auburn mane, that was likely the reaction she was going for.

‘Valerie! What the hell? How did you get my comm-?”

“Didn’t you understand me, Kris? A shamefully brusque greeting, when I’m graciously calling after all this time, shows a most distressing lack of class. Weren’t you raised to be better than that?” 

“You know damn well what you did to me, you bitch!”   


“Oh you mean how you came back to rescue me?” Onscreen, Valerie batted her eyes and pouted her lips, affecting hurt she had never felt as her voice grew nasal and cloying. “You make it sound like I didn’t appreciate it. I did, I truly did!” 

“You haven’t changed! Still the same snide, self-important hypocrite-!”

“Hey Seattle!” A beloved voice behind her shot a chill down Kris’ spine, “Who ya talking to?”

“Now’s not a good time-!”

“Oh, who’s that? You got another girlfriend already? RRRrraaawrr, you work fast!”

“She’s nothing to do with you!”

“Oooh wait don’t tell me…” Valerie , snapped her fingers theatrically. “Don’ttellmedonttellmedon’ttellmedon’ttellme… wait. Is that Gobbet?

Kris felt the blood in her veins go cold. If Val had been behind the Antarctic fiasco in any way, it wouldn’t stop until she’d brought Kris down again. Taken her away from Duncan, and Gobbet. 

“How the hell do you know about-?”

“I mean, of course it had to be her,” Valerie chortled, face contorted in apparent confusion as if she’d just been asked whether dragons were dangerous untrustworthy, “You always did have some strange tastes in girls, Kris. But then that’s what attracted me to you. I mean we used to have  _ such… fun. _ ”

Kris felt the last few reins on her self-control snap. 

“Until you BETRAYED ME!! Left me to take the heat alone. I got thrown into a black site, Valerie, a… fucking…  _ black site!”  _ She was crying now. “8 years Valerie. I had no one and nothing for eight  _ fucking  _ years and I just…” Speaking became harder, her frantic sobbing rendering all words unpronounceable save for one. “Why?” 

There was a long pause. Valerie seemingly had the guts to look repentant, clutching her hand to her chest, her eyes wide. 

“Kris…” she began tentatively, “What did you expect would happen?”

“W-What?” The words shocked Kris out of her tears. “What do you mean ‘what did I expect-!’”

“You weren’t going anywhere Kris. That doddering old coot might have taken you in but he was never able to take the streets out of you.” She pounded her chest emphatically. “Here. Where it matters. You will always be Point Blank.”

“You-you… you were a SINless street girl in the Barrens, Val! Just like-!”

“Oh  _ no _ , not like you, Kris.” Carefree eyes, but hard as the plexiglass screen, “You were never going to make anything of yourself. You’d never even have the nerve to betray me or anything; I was never worried about that.” Her sweet grin cut deep into Kris’ heart. “But even still, I had my future to consider. And prison wasn’t so different from the streets, surely? You could call it a barren rat’s second home!”

Hate and hurt warred within Kris’s heart as she struggled in vain to keep her emotions in check.

“Oh, did you mean the run I asked for your help with? Oh, how silly. Silly PB~” She waved her hand dismissively, her red lips wavering as she blew breath between them. “Pfffft~ So it’s like this, this company that I’d gotten a SIN with -yeah, I know it was temporary, but at that age,  _ wow!  _ Yay me!- as I was saying, this company needed someone to take the fall for one of their CEO’s more… backwater decisions. Something about submitting a petition for another rec center in the Barrens, or something similarly trite. I just thought ‘hmmm. Isn’t there someone I know who’s good for that sort of thing? Someone who nobody would miss and who wouldn’t be too put out, and I  _ insisted  _ that you were a friend. They’ve seen so many like you, they told me. They were actually going to throw you back on the trash heap.. But it was by  _ my  _ personal recommendation that you were sent to prison where you could feel at home, and not back to that run-down community center you always told me you didn’t like. So if you look at it that way you kinda owe me; I  _ did  _ save you from a misplaced life above your station.”

“What the hell kind of messed up logic is that-?” Hate was losing ground to fear and confusion.

“Oh, would you look at that? My stories are on. And Kris you _know_ how much I love me some good trid drama.” She looked a little down for about two seconds. “It’s a bummer for me too. I mean, if we were still an item, I’d have a _deadly terrorist_ , feared by millions, still chained to my bed _._ Of course, as an upstanding citizen I wouldn’t be caught dead breaking the law but- what’s it like, Krissy? Being a villain? I will say, if you’re any indication of what _the other side_ looks like- ” She gave Kris a once-over and winked. “- street rats never looked hotter.” 

“Val, wait. Please. Please, Val, wait-”

The smile on  Valerie sculpted face bore no hint to the saccharine inflection in her velvet voice.

“Did you say something Kris? I couldn’t hear you over the-” 

That was all she got out before Gobbet charged across the room, pulled the commlink out of Kris’s trembling hands and chuckled it across the room with enough force that it shattered against the wall. The ork’s arms encircled her mate’s body.

“Kris? Kris, hang with me. Kris- ”

_ “Who the hell does she think she is?” _

Gobbet was pushed aside by her girlfriend, who then stormed around the room yelling about Valerie. How can she be so cruel, care so little? Why the frag couldn’t Kris stop raging and shouting and  _ caring _ about some drek fragger who will never care about her? 

Kris’s self-destructive spiral was painful to watch. She talked nothing about anything but Val. About how she's not as good as she thinks she is! How she’s always been a user! How she’s never gonna be satisfied and all she does is take take take, and _why couldn’t she just be happy with her!?_

Gobbet soon sees that Point Blank won't stop her self-destructive rampage, so she lets her go on, slinging tears of bitter rage so fiercely that Gobbet was sure she didn't know she was crying. It was hard for Gobbet to watch her carry on, to know that there was someone out there who’d cut her perfect little Seattle so deeply. She was nearly crying herself as Kris started to wind down, her body tired and spent from ranting and crying. Gobbet didn’t so much as catch Kris as much as her perfect killing-machine of a girlfriend just slumped into her arms, muttering incoherently into the ork’s chiseled bosom.

Gobbet gently rocked Kris' trembling body to sleep, the adept’s silent sobs not quite ceasing even as her breath fell into slumber.

**Author's Note:**

> **AN** This was exhausting. Emotionally exhausting. I had no idea writing someone like Valerie would be so damn draining. But then that's the point I suppose; to be a drain instead of being drained? I wouldn't know. **AN**


End file.
